Practical Travel Safety Issues - A peek from where the USA may be in the future...

From an article about the rescue of the Russian Submariners in the London Times:

"The Russian Navy is now facing grave questions after the incident about equipment shortages, safety standards and obsessive secrecy."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1726467_2,00.html

Not that obscessive secrecy is anything new to the Russians.

For years they paid informants to spy on their own people, leading to secrecy in the masses. Due to the way communism "works" and money / resources are allocated, different departments practiced intense secrecy to try to make sure they could always get as much as possible, etc.

At one point, even members of the Politburo weren't informed that the Russians were experimenting, in violation of many international treaties, with weaponizing smallpox.

Their internal secrecy and related culture of lies has hurt them this way (as in the sub incident) before on many occasions.